Plk_Lesiak
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Posts posted by Plk_Lesiak
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4 hours ago, Nenor5VB said:
The slogan can be something like, "American Otakus Make The USA Cool Again" or "US Otakus for Freedom and Liberty", or "US Otakus creating for every American".
Man, please don't... This is so cringe. You're turning a good idea into this weird social activism exercise that will appeal only to people that are already in your narrow niche and scare off everyone else. The indie VN community in the West is already very progressive. It doesn't need this virtue signalling and if you think there's some forms of diversity/representation that are too rare, remedy that by action (making your VN the way you feel is appropriate) and promoting games that already fit it (I assure you, if you look at game jams such as NaNoRenO or Yuri Game Jam and commercial projects by devs that show up there, you'll find plenty of diversity).
And really, you should be talking to other devs about this stuff, in places such as Lemma Soft and VN Devs subreddit. That's where you could make a difference.
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Do you want to know me well? No worries, I wouldn't. But maybe I drilled my horrible personality and taste into your minds regardless?
Anyway, here's the quiz. Please let me know whether I left some kind of digital footprint beyond being that EVN-advocate weirdo who writes a blog that no one reads.
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Got 5/10! The ones I got right I wasn't even guessing on. With a bit of luck I'd have been on top, even though I don't follow your posts outside of Fuwa.
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8 hours ago, Dreamysyu said:
Also, the relationship between the MC and Yue in the first volume is actually one of the best things about the LN, and it's a shame that it was kind of ruined after it turned into harem. Though on their own Shea and Shizuku are also pretty good.
Just from curiosity, does Yue stay as the primary heroine for the whole thing in the LN? The anime suggests she's the only one who's feelings were genuinely returned by the protagonist and this made the harem dynamics somewhat tolerable. At least Hajime wasn't a spineless whimp with no preferences or agency.
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I've been a bit depressed lately and somehow I circled back to my primary remedy for such moods, that is, watching god-awful anime. For starters, I've finished Gleipnir which I nearly finished those few seasons ago when my anime-watching habits suddenly died and made me abandon the whole thing for the sake of watching v-tubers. The fact the two v-tubers I now follow are on break probably was an important factor in why this resurgence happened... But nonetheless, Gleipnir is what I'd call competent trash. It's outlandish in its narrative and edgy beyond all reason, but is also produced very nicely and between the angst-filled cliches and very obvious fanservice there are some cool story bits in it. The relationship between the protagonist and the main girl even evolves into something strangely wholesome(?) by the end of the first season, as he overcomes his whimpiness (basically becomes a cold-blooded killer, but one with a purpose) and she realizes she can't treat him as a mere tool any more. It didn't even feel that forced. Also, I liked some of the nightmare-fuel sequences/body horror. Still a very inconsistent story and infinitely trashy, but has way more charm than I expected. Interestingly enough, I can stomach this kind of mood in fantasy, while I can't stand it in "realistic" anime. I liked this, but hated Happy Sugar Life with a passion... I wonder how Mahou Shoujo Site will work? Probably my next pick (yup, I'm that much of a bottom-feeder).
On the other hand the second pile of steaming crap I've decided to consume proved as stinky as people said it is. Arifureta... Where do I even start? Criminally bad pacing. Nothing in this story feels properly elaborated on and intelligently presented. More than that, the more important the plotpoint, the more glossed over it seems to be. The protag crafting his replacement arm? Literally one shot. The relationship with the vampire girl turning from random encounter to romance? Maybe 5 minutes. Nothing is meaningful, nothing is earned, nothing has proper logic behind it. I mean, the frickin' Smartphone Isekai anime had better story flow than this. Also the use of CG... I think this had a decent budget? It sure doesn't look the part...
I think the only redeeming quality might be the humour? That also only applies to the initial episodes, for the most part. Like, the scene when protagonist encounters the ancient prison in the first labyrinth and just goes "nope, not freeing whatever's there" was hilarious. Honestly, if the whole thing relied on humour and protagonist's selfish attitude a bit more it could've been a bit more fun. But in the end, it falls in the same trap as most isekais, that is the protagonist being literal Jesus even if he tries to hide it. Well, I guess he murders people a lot (the slaver network sequence is literally a rampage in the middle of a major city with massive material loss), so there's that part, but somehow the series still tries to sell him as a hero. Lame.
And as the cherry on top, loli vampire as the main heroine. And not even an interesting one, she's probably all the things you though after reading those two words and nothing more. I wonder how botched this series is as an adaptation, considering the LN is relatively respected? Can't imagine those story elements adding to anything decent even if they were handled better (outside of the initial concept of protagonist's powers and how his transformation happens)...
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7 hours ago, Nenor5VB said:
Heck, why not try making an Isekai VN with an African-American MC instead who gets teleported to another world with fantasy and magic ? That way, you can easily throw any kind of romanceable heroines at it including elves, noblewomen, princesses, vampires, succubuses, female knights, etc. Though it may be necessary to include at least one dark-skinned heroine too in the mix to prevent the creators to be accused of colorism imo.
Man, I kind of assumed that varied love interests are an obvious choice in a project like that? Avoiding being accused of colorism is such an ass-backwards framing for this... Also, making a VN with all-PoC (but still diverse) cast is... Offensive to people in interracial marriages? Is there some genuine anti-white sentiment in that game? I understand you argue for inclusivity, but also, it's hard to tell whether you're trying to describe what you want to achieve in your project/see in other VNs or some kind of moral principle. I low-key hate diversity as a moral principle for all fiction, because while it's generally a positive thing to promote, most of it ends up being vapid pandering and kind of goes against the creative liberty you mention in your post. Maybe that's less of a risk in VNs, as they are not corporate-driven, but I think people should tell stories they want to tell, whether they include my identity or not. I mean, I think half of the VNs I've read were about Asian or American woman dating other woman. Inserting a slavic guy in his 30s in the middle of those stories would hardly make them more attractive to me... Or to anyone.
Anyway, I think you've also briefly touched on an interesting point, because as someone who plays mostly small/indie VNs, in my experience there's a lot of diversity like this in western-produced stuff already. But for Japanese and more Japanese-inspired works, fantasy often is the means of introducing variety and themes of race and discrimination. I mean, you can still have a black protagonist or a black love interest mixed with various fantasy races, but narratively-speaking it will likely be little more than an aesthetic choice, as the contrast between them and non-human races will always be at the front. There's no reason not to do it, but unless you invent some creative narrative gimmick, like black people not being a thing in that world and the protagonist being treated as non-human for example, there's also not much to discuss here. It will be a bonus for PoC readers, a detriment to occasional racist f****, but overall, it won't matter much. In modern setting, there's a lot more potential for it being meaningful... But I'm still not getting any ideas about HOW you would like it to be included outside of sheer representation. Representation is a positive thing, but in this context also so inoffensive that talking about it for more than a few posts is kind of pointless. Unless you give us more context on what kind of stories you want to see, this discussion is doomed to being vapid as f***. And I'm just not sure whether you're walking on eggshells to not insult anyone/weren't sure what reaction you're going to get (the otaku community is what it is...) or just don't have any specific scenarios to pitch and discuss at this point...
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Smaller indie VNs sometimes already do that by letting you customize your MC in various ways, like giving them a darker skin tone or changing gender, but it comes with the cost of them not showing up in CGs and dialogue/story being generic enough to not clash with any possible configuration. I don't self-insert very much so for me the bland or invisible protagonists detract from my enjoyment. I'd indeed take a protagonist that is very much unlike myself, like a woman or a black person, over an empty shell any day.
The curious part of your question is that I'm not sure how to interpret the framing. Are you trying to make a protagonist that is essentially a self-insert but black/have a background that will appeal to black readers? If the protagonist has as little presence as those in JP eroge (meaning it won't lean very heavily into any kind of identity or personality traits to not get in the way of the reader filling the blanks), I don't think that would matter that much to usual VN readers. They should still have enough in common with the MC to self-insert without much issue, like they do for Japanese protags. It you want a well-defined black protagonist and a plot that refers to their race in meaningful ways... Than I definitely wouldn't mind it, but that's because it'll be clearly someone's story, and not masturbatory waifu fantasy. Other people that look for stories over fap material will also likely be interested with the unusual setup, like Zaka already suggested. The main issue is to communicate clearly what you're aiming for/what your game has going for it and not overstating the identity stuff.
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A definite no for the iso files, as far as I know. There is the Android version of Visual Novel Reader, which essentially acts as an emulator, but I think it needs some porting work/a specific file format for the VN to run so you wouldn't be just able to use all of your PC copies for it. I never used it though, so maybe someone with more experience can guide you through how it works in practice.
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Welcome, welcome! Nice to see another person lured by DDLC to the bottomless rabbit hole of VNs.
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I generally have little interest in Nijisanji and Hana isn't really that much of an exceptions when it goes to reasons why. She doesn't have any eye-catching gimmicks and generally doesn't play a character. Her mannerisms also didn't immediately convinced me to follow her streams. However, eventually I ended up watching her PSO2 content due to my own interest in the game and I started understanding her appeal better. A bit similarly to Amelia Watson, she's quite passionate about games and very open and honest with her audience. She's also a bit older than you average JP or ID streamer and it shows in how she communicates with her fans, the typical streamer goofiness aside. Of course, her popularity is in decent part connected to her being a relatively early English-speaking v-tuber (she's a Japanese/American hafu living in Indonesia and her English is native speaker-level), but I think she very much deserves being the flagship creator for Nijisanji ID.
*The glasses portrayed above are a new addition and it's unclear how much use they'll get in the future, however, as a glasses-loving degenerate I felt the need to feature this version of Hana over any other.
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Hana Macchia is a female Indonesian virtual YouTuber and a first wave member of Nijisanji ID, Nijisanji's Indonesian Virtual Liver branch with Taka Radjiman and ZEA Cornelia.
A university student majoring in design, Hana debuted to create a safe space for people to feel comfortable, entertained, and not alone. She will always accompany and encourage you from afternoon to evening. She has a considerable sense of curiosity. Hana is also a person who smiles easily. In addition to having a great sense of curiosity, she also wanted to try something she only knew, for example on Minecraft streams when he collaborated with Taka and ZEA, she wanted to do Debus in front of them even though in the end, Taka prevented her from doing that.
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Welcome! "Not very social" is probably a common trait around here, but we get along pretty well. I hope you'll have a good time posting too. ^^
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5 hours ago, AngstyNarrator said:
Oh shit sorry.
No harm done, but I don't imagine the OP trying to update this list after 4 years.
Be careful about the dates on the threads you're posting on in the future.
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Taboo content is a bit broad, could you specify a bit? There's a lot of taboos that are so heavily used in hentai that most people around here will be totally desensitised to it (incest romance for example), but there are some that would be a lot more uncomfortable to people. Plus co-writer sounds more serious than just giving feedback, you're looking for advice or developing the story together long-term?
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Foot fetish is more of an actual fetish I think. It's niche. Whoever is not into that other category simply doesn't know what's good.
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Ok, I kind of have to give it back to Episode 4. While I still don't give a fuck about the schoolgirl and her internal struggle and I think the Earth setting was mostly created for the anime tie-in, after a few turns the lore became quite interesting and I ended up fighting God. Like, not some god, THE God. Didn't expect that, and it was a ballsy move in a way. Overall Episode 4 is like 3/5, but had enough cool touches to make the whole thing enjoyable. ^^
On the gameplay side of things, leveling kind of hits a wall after lvl 85, but I don't mind. I'm leveling an elite class (Luster) as my subclass now and the bonuses it gives are insane. It's going to be fun experimenting with this in the future.
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Suisei is one of those talents that particularly make me appreciate Hololive. A girl that was rejected in multiple idol agency for "lacking focus" (meaning she could sing, play instruments, draw...) and maybe wouldn't ever get into show-business without v-tubing... Pretty absurd considering what she does today and how most "actual" idols sound when they try to sing live.
Quite like with Calliope, who worked two jobs on top of her rapping to get by in Japan and could barely manage to make music, it just feels right to see her getting some love and success in this formula.
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Hoshimachi Suisei (星街すいせい) is a female Japanese Virtual YouTuber associated with hololive. While originally an independent VTuber who eventually was recruited into hololive, she is currently part of "hololive 0th gen" alongside fellow solo debutants: Tokino Sora, Roboco, Sakura Miko and AZKi.
Suisei is a modest, multitalented singer and aspiring idol who is among the more level-headed members of hololive, though she also has a childish streak. After her unexpectedly compelling performance as a traitor in a game of Project Winter, she gained a reputation for remorseless sociopathy behind a facade of polite sweetness. No one seems to know how much of the "Psychopath Suisei" persona is real or not, but Suisei herself acknowledges that it is extremely funny and has referred to the incident on multiple occasions.
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4 hours ago, alpacaman said:
I don't really want to get too deep into discussing Grisaia as I don't want to derail the thread, but is it really the character routes that are the most contentious? (...)
Well, I don't want to go too deep into this either, but you wrote mostly about hating tropes it uses which is a lot more in the personal taste/cultural sensitivities category. Just like the complaints @Dreamysyu mentioned, that's kind of a whole another layer of discussion. Plus with production quality... Sure, people may dislike the artstyle or it might age poorly... The same might even happen to storytelling, with VNs as a medium and culture people live in changing. But you can both acknowledge something representing high quality in its original context and it not standing the test of time – but honestly, 2D games suffer from this way less than many other forms of media.
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(Sorry, I couldn't contain myself). To add something more substantial, I completely get where you are coming from on this. I think the term you're looking for is "valid". You can point to a set of criteria a piece of media should adhere to in your opinion, explain where these criteria come from and why you accept them as an indicator for quality. You can say that the action scenes in the Transformers movies are bad because they are cut in a way that doesn't properly convey what is even going on instead of just cutting really fast between locations, and in your opinion an action scene should actually show the action. That is more valid than someone saying "skyscraper go boom", but it's not more objective.
The reason I fight the term "objective" that much is probably because of these youtube channels that claim to do "objective criticism" when all they basically do is stop at every frame and scream "that's stupid", and by claiming to be objective they can pretend they are not just whining because they don't like a movie having a female/PoC protagonist who actually does stuff.
Well, I'll have to retreat to the intersubjectivity term that Palas was so nice to introduce to the discussion. Obviously no standards can be truly objective because objectivity arguably doesn't exist at all. But that doesn't mean things like consistent writing or technical prowess are completely up to one's feelings – it's grounded in the societally-created rules on what is considered positive, or sometimes the internal logic of the text itself. I, once more, argue that quality assessment and overall judgment on whether a piece of media is good/enjoyable are interconnected, but separate. Pointing out plotholes and poorly directed shots that make everything into blurry mess – these are as close to factual statements as you can ever get in media criticism. You can use the word "valid", "grounded" or whatever to avoid the misleading framing, but it's still the same principle. Like, the only possible riposte you would have for the asshats you mentioned above would be "these things don't matter as much as you make them seem", which is a fair opinion, but in no way invalidates their complaints. People freak out about the "culture of nitpicking" nowadays but if you don't have a counterargument against the nitpick, it means it pointed out a flaw. And small flaws can combine into a deeply flawed experience – which might still be very much worthwhile or effective, but that doesn't mean those are not worth discussing or can't ruin the experience for some. That final assessment, of course, is a lot more subjective and requires a lot more elaboration than sheer quality assessment can ever provide. That's why a review which tries to be as objective as possible will not only fail to achieve that goal, but will likely also be a very crappy thing to read. Or is, indeed, a pose assumed in bad faith/to mask one's opinions.
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3 hours ago, alpacaman said:
So am I calling Grisaia the Twilight of the VN community? Yes. But my point is, you could basically do a similar mental exercise with any popular and/or highly regarded piece of media.
I don't think saying Grisaia is the Twilight of VNs is that wrong... Maybe slightly exaggerated.
But let's focus on Kajitsu for the time being. I think there are many positive things about it you'll be able to get most people to agree about. Like it's humour being well-done, the art and music being consistently high-quality and the common route effectively building up towards the dramatic character routes. The trashy and over-the-top parts of it, mostly showing up in the later parts of the experience, are what's most contentious about it – and it'd be easy to argue they wouldn't work, even for their intended audience, if they weren't preceded by the genuinely well-done aspects of the game, building the necessary emotional investment and slowly exploring the crucial characters.
Also, from what I've seen, you'll find more people claiming it's a very enjoyable VN or a good entry-level one (for people who are not yet sick of the tropes it relies on), rather than seriously saying it's a masterpiece. In my ideal world, the statements "Kajitsu's heroine routes are trashy and over-the-top" and "Kajitsu is a great/touching experience for those that enjoy its stylistic" are completely compatible with each other and non-controversial. And we should, indeed, put all popular media to similar scrutiny.
Edit: TBH, this is kind of a heavy(?) topic for me personally, as someone who plays with reviewing stuff. We're living in a world where things that I find objectively atrocious, like the Transformers movies, are wildly successful. And in a world where media critics fetishise technical competency and subversion of tropes that something as awful as The Last Jedi could become a critical darling. But still I don't think that we should give up on certain baseline quality standards. I mean, you can make various excuses and adjustments when it goes to specific genres and storytelling formulas, but for example, are teens too dumb to enjoy better prose and better-constructed characters than what Twilight offers? Nah. Its even on different level than Kajitsu, that very deliberately builds it's cascade of ridiculousness and ends up with something pretty unique despite remixing overused tropes – it's just lame writing, and that's the part that no amount of context can nullify.
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Well, Digital Seclusion is now officially Fuwa-endorsed: https://fuwanovel.net/reviews/2021/02/27/digital-seclusion/
Those that didn't read it yet, shame on you, but consider checking out both the review and the VN itself. Also, further discussion is encouraged. :3
What Anime are you watching now?
in Anime/Manga Talk
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You mean the remake/the recent one? I think I stalled it around the middle of the second season, but I have to come back to it, from what I read it only gets better along the way. :3